Banshee 1.6 Integrates with Ubuntu One Music Store

Banshee 1.6 proves to be a stable release after the numerous developer releases in the 1.5.x series. In addition to the U1MS plugin created by Jo Shields, the new Banshee includes numerous improvements over 1.4. Among them is a DJ tool called a Play Queue that randomly plays music by artist, album, song rating or score mode. The new Banshee also has an import filter for MP3 songs purchased from eMusic.

Banshee with the Ubuntu One Music Store under Ubuntu 10.04.

Banshee 1.6 supports a number of new devices, among them HTC's Nexus One, Nokia's N900 and the Palm Pre. The Banshee download archives page includes the full list of enhancements.

Ubuntu One Music Store for all?

The Banshee player, programmed in Mono, was originally developed by Novell. However, Novell and the other distros aren't likely to have any interest in delivering the U1MS plugin with the Banshee version, because cloud support is required to access Ubuntu One.

The newest openSUSE version of Banshee doesn't include the U1MS plugin, but the Banshee community extensions (that include the plugin) in the libubuntuone libraries can be compiled into other distros. In a short test, it was relatively easy to install the plugin into openSUSE 11.3. Not unexpectedly, the compiled version of Banshee crashed almost immediately after activating the plugin.

Banshee under openSUSE 11.3 (M5). After activating the U1MS plugin, the software crashed right after startup.

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In Irish mythology, the banshee’s mourning call is heard when a member of the family is about to die. The Banshee tool on Linux makes noise too, but for a far happier purpose. This banshee helps you organize your musical collection.